Iran will Announce Huge Leap toward Industrial-Scale Production of Enriched Uranium
William Broad and David Sanger wrote quite an interesting article for The New York Times. Iran is expected to announce something important on February the 11th (this coming Sunday): the anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. As both men write, “Iran is expected to declare in coming days that it has made a huge leap toward industrial-scale production of enriched uranium — a defiant act that the country’s leaders will herald as a major technical stride and its neighbors will denounce as a looming threat.” They add that “many nuclear experts say, the frenetic activity at the desert enrichment plant in Natanz may be mostly about political showmanship.”
The many setbacks and outright failures of Tehran’s experimental program suggest that its bluster may outstrip its technical expertise. And the problems help explain American intelligence estimates that Iran is at least four years away from producing a nuclear weapon.
After weeks of limited access inside Iran, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have reported that Tehran has succeeded in manufacturing parts for about 3,000 centrifuges, the devices that can spin uranium into reactor fuel — or bomb fuel. In recent days, the Iranians have begun installing the machines and supporting gear in a cavernous plant at Natanz, which would be a potential target if the United States or one of its allies decided that diplomacy would never keep Iran from getting the bomb.
What the Iranians are not talking about, experts with access to the atomic agency’s information say, is that their experimental effort to make centrifuges work has struggled to achieve even limited success and appears to have been put on the back burner so the country’s leaders can declare that they are moving to the next stage.
Thus: it could very well be that the Mullahs announce something ‘major’ because of the domestic situation / due todomestic pressure.
Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, commented: “It looks political unless they’ve made progress that we don’t know about.”
Besides the fact that an announcement by Iran regarding its nuclear program is most likely never positive, Broad and Sanger explain:
Nuclear experts outside the United States government say that if Iran is successful in its latest move and carries out the enrichment, in open defiance of a United Nations demand that it suspend such activity, it could potentially yield fuel for an atom bomb in two or three years, faster than American intelligence has suggested.
American intelligence suggested that Iran would be able to produe an atom bomb in four years.
A European diplomat, who wised to remain anonymous, said that inspectors found parts for 3 000 centrifuges. 3 000 centrifuges would, obviously, bring Iran quite a big step closer to an atom bomb. The less bad news is that those centrifuges are of the P-1 type. P-1 centrifuges enrich uranium much slower than P-2 centrifuges do.
The more bad news, however, is that Ahmadinejad already stated last year that Iran is also building P-2 centrifuges. This could be bluff, but it also leads many people to believe that Iran has a hidden nuclear facility somewhere. Why? Because inspectors have not “been shown any of those”.
The above quotes Mr. Fitzpatrick explained that the “industrial push” is a bit strange considering its reported problems with its nuclear program: “From a technical point of view, it’s illogical to stand up 3,000 centrifuges before you know how to do it.”
If we purely rely on what Western countries know about Iran’s nuclear program, it seems that Iran is / will be bluffing.
There is however, as Broad and Sanger explain, a problem: Iran is leaving inspectors partially blind. They are only allowed to visit “a narrow range of operations”. Combine that with the following paragraph:
The Iranians appear to have sped ahead. In interviews, diplomats and nuclear officials said recent inspector reports of rapid centrifuge mobilization and installation at Natanz show that Tehran had worked hard for the past year, even as it engaged in increasingly harsh language that some experts took as a cover for technical failings.
And it is clear that… there are lot of things we don’t know, aren’t sure of and are quite worrisome.
The Gun Toting Liberal responded to this news and to reports that Iranian scientists claimed that they have discovered a herbal cure for AIDS. As GTL writes: “It’s great to know Iranian technology will help prolong the lives of AIDS victims to the point where they, too, can both participate in, and fully enjoy the battle to end human, animal, and plant life on Earth as we know it.”
He goes on to explain that he sees some similarities between Bush and Ahmadinejad:
What it gets down to is this: curing AIDS while commanding one [LOSING] side in the Battle of Armagheddon; leaving “No Child Left Behind� while commanding the other [LOSING] side in the Battle of Armagheddon; amounts to picking up a candy bar wrapper on a sidewalk and tossing it into the nearest waste receptacle on one’s way to robbing and MURDERING an elderly lady with a cane…
And concludes:
… and if we, as a people, believe that there is ANY “honor� WHATSOEVER in such conduct, this world has gone completely INSANE.
Although I understand GTL’s point of view, I have to say that I get the feeling that he is overdoing it a bit: firstly, Bush is absolutely no Ahmadinejad and, secondly, I don’t think that Bush and Ahmadinejad are truly preparing for Armageddon (although Ahmadinejad might disagree). At this point in time, Iran can, quite simply, not win a full-scale war against the U.S. It will be destroyed quite instantly. The situation becomes dangerous when Iran does have nuclear weapons. That is why – I presume – most people are dedicated to making sure that Iran will never own them.
Another blogpost that has to be read is this one by Steve Clemons. He writes:
Iran’s scientists and theocratic leaders may be lying to their public about their technological achievements much as Americans were lied to about Iraq’s WMDs to stoke national passions and expectations.
If this is the case, it would be useful for some sophisticated and precise commentary at some point from inspectors or other nuclear experts familiar with Iran’s nuclear program to define whether or not there is a gap between what Ahmadinejad and other top Iran officials are saying about Iran’s nuke program, and what they have really achieved — or said another way, what failures they want to cover-up from their citizens and the world.
He is – of course – right. The Mullahs – or perhaps better said Ahmadinejad – might be lying to the Iranian people. If not, however, the situation is becoming more and more dangerous. We have to find out more about Iran’s nuclear program. More studies are necessary.
More at Hot Air. The guys at Hot Air also wonder whether scientists are “fair game for assassination” in response to reports that the Mossad may have killed one of Iran’s leading nuclear scientists (h/t Holly). Although this might sound harsh, my answer is that, yes, scientists can be “fair game for assassination”. As Misha commenting at Hot Air points out: “Should Wernher v Braun or Joseph Mengele have been assassinated? I believe that’s your answer, right there.”
If it is considered to be absolutely necessary, it should be done. Just as politicians can threaten other countries, (the acts of) scientists can do the same.
Secular Blasphemy shares my view on this.
That being said, it is far from sure that the Mossad did, indeed, kill Iranian nuclear physicist professor Ardashir Hosseinpour. A typical “could be true, could also be very much untrue”-case.
36 Responses to “Iran will Announce Huge Leap toward Industrial-Scale Production of Enriched Uranium”
MVG’s post is interesting not only for the discussion of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but also for how these are factored into the left/right polarization that seems to have poisoned our body politic.
GunTotingLiberal dismissing the Iran’s words as rubbish…that Iran could not do this, that this is right-wing hysteria…and then attacking Bush, is reflective of this attitude.
Folks might remember the recent kerfuffle about China showing its anti-satellite capabilities by blowing up one of its own recently. If one was following Technoblogs for about a week before, rumors were flying about this strike. These rumors were dismissed, by liberals such as Hitchens (a liberal tech writer, not the Brit iconoclast), as typical scare tactics and that China “both would not and could not do this.” Then China officially announced it had done it, whereupon the talking point shifted to “they had every right to do this, as the US threatens them.”
I imagine when a mushroom test cloud goes up over a desert in Iran in a year or so, GunTotingLiberal will be blaming Bush for not stopping it.
Man, only a masochist would want to be President (though Air Force One is a nice perk, I will admit
Marlowecan: I’ll interprete that as a compliment
Anyway, you are right about the polarization, of course. I wrote some parts of this post with quite a feeling for understatement as you may have noticed.
This is worded to make it sound like now they can’t but if they get nukes then it’d be (at least) mutually assured destruction. I’m gonna say this even though I keep saying it because no one ever responds.
Iran is developing fision based weapons, the relatively hard to process ones at that. They will probably be around 15 kilotons in strength and considering how difficult they are to produce it is very unlikely that they’ll have many more than 20 and even that amount would take at least a decade to make after they are fully operational.
In a modern city, each nuke would probably kill 20,000-50,000 people if sufficient emergency procedures were in place. Thus, even if Iran launched its entire arsenal at Israel in 10-15 years, they’d still “only” be able to kill about one-sixth of the populace.
Compare this to one of our nukes which has 6-8 (I think that’s the operational configuration) warheads per missle each at 800k-1 megaton. One of those warheads is 3x more powerful than the entire theoretical Iranian arsenal, and there are eight of them per missle.
Would Iran be a threat with nukes? Yes, but on a political level, not an existential one. They could easily use them to leverage an increase in state-sponsored terrorism and would definitely use them to increase regional influence, but the world isn’t at stake here. Moreover, the latter goal of political domination is shared by both the reformists and the mullahs, so no amount of regime change would really help. Even if Ahmednejad is as evil as he sounds, the mullahs are certainly more pragamatic and could take him down.
Of course there needs to be a discussion about whether we should let Iran get nuclear weapons, but it needs to be grounded in reality. If we don’t stop them, we need a comprehensive plan to try to limit terrorism and their likely use of oil as a political weapon. If we try to stop them, we have to prepare for possible regional confrontation or — depending on who you believe — even worldwide terrorist retaliation.
After the U.S. leaves Iraq, why would be Iranian believe that the United States would relatilate against Iran with Nuclear Weapons if they attacked Isreal (or anyone else) with their Nuclear Weapons. They could easily convience themselves that Senator Clinton/Senator Obama or whoever else is president at the time will be “too weak” to launch an attack against Iran.
SD — How do you conclude that anyone could be convinced (easily or otherwise) that Hillary Clinton would be “too weak”?
[...] ***** Go check out our friend Michael van der Galien’s post at The Moderate Voice — he quotes, and disagrees slightly with me, and provides great insight as well as a fantastic blog roundup Technorati Tags:Â Ahmadinejad, AIDS, Bush, Current Events, Democrats, Headline News, Headlines, HIV, Iran, News, News and Politics, Politics, Rants, Raw Story, Republicans [...]
Poliman,
Look at the events in the middle east, from a militant middle east prospective. When the Marines were killed in Beirut, the Americans ran. When the rangers were killed in Somalia, the Americans ran. Now you have Senator Clinton and Senator Obama wanting to ran out of Iraq. Americans were not killed in Bosnia and they stuck around for a decade.
It is not a reach to believe that militant radicals in the Muslim world will interpret the U.S.’s leaving Iraq as a total sign of weakness.
superdestroyer,
I think what Polimom is saying is that she doubts that Hillary would do anything that would be construed as weak: that she truly is hawkish. I guess I mostly agree with that although I see her as an opportunist and my guess is she’d react hawkishly to anything that threatened or harmed Israel while perhaps not being as aggressive if she thought that it would be unpopular.
Idiotic statements such as this is why the left can’t be taken seriously. Of course gun-toting liberal and others would like us to believe that Iran is bluffing because they do not wish to take any military action against Iran. There are those in the west who have their heads in the sand and it’s conforting for them to pretend that Iran is not really a threat and thus have convinced themselves that ahmadenijad is bluffing about the country’s progress on nuclear weapons. Liberals have no answers when it comes to fighting terrorism and the likes of ahmadenijad, they only have criticisms for those of us who believe we must use military force.
We’ve heard this talk before, when it was used as an excuse to send more kids to die in Vietnam. Credibility this, credibility that…
I’m sick of people saying Hillary is an opportunist, something John McCain for example, is never accused of being, even though he too cannot be placed in some ideological straightjacket.
All the times we “ran” out of a country were because the conflict was low level and sporadic, which powerful countries have had a hard time dealing with throughout history. Whenever the conflict is massive and between armies (or would involve weapons of mass destruction) we have no problem using force.
I think everyone seems to believe that Iran would analyze American’s actions the same way that the pundit class in Washington, DC would. Iran would see anyone who proposes a total withdrawl from Iraq as weakness and that preception would have nothing to do with any form of internal U.S. politics. Remember, I am not arguing that Iran is correct but they could easily interpret the action of the U.S. in such a way that Iraq (and the rest of the Shiite world) could attack Isreal while threatening the U.S. without the U.S. responding.
Remember, in their world, the “Will of Allah” is a powerful argument.
Komrad Marlow – While a Left/Right debate is good for the phoggosphere, it is mostly rhetoric. When the debate is a scientific/technical debate nobody listens or cares, takes on a completely different urgency.
Mikkel The fission gun type bomb is a simpler device than the implosion bomb. According to Wiki (citation needed) a fission gun type bomb would be unstable if accidently dropped in sea water.
For the Iran situation numbers please:
a) 164
b) 328
c) 3000
d) 54,000
These numbers are significant to the Iranians HEU/LEU program. Despite all claims from Iranian propaganda effort and the warmongers in the US and Israel, Iran is still at step a, along way from 54,000.
For all those weeping and screaming about the immenent incineration of Tel Aviv please take a breath and relax. Iran has more to worry about these three items:
a) Jerico 2
b) Popeye Turbo
c) Shav
Google these, Popeye Turbo isn’t a post-modern lover of Olive Oil.
We only have to fear neurotic bloggosphere fear itself.
Well superdestroyer what a lot of people have learned from Vietnam (and expressed in the Errol Morris interview with McNamara) is that we spent a lot of time and dialogue with the Soviets (and later the Chinese) so both sides fully understood what page we were on. However in Vietnam we completely misanalyzed the driving forces, something we have repeated in Iraq.
In a prior thread about negotiation with Iran I responded to several people claiming that Iran would never give up anything by saying that at the very least we could get better insight into what makes them tick — and visa versa. Military options as a last resort doesn’t mean that both sides stay separate until some arbitrary time and then fight; it means that both sides work to understand each other’s aims fully (which is hard to do by reading public proclamations because they are filled with internal propaganda) and then decide whether they can live with them or fight.
Mikkel,
I suggest you look up Shooting Blanks: War Making That Doesn’t Work (Paperback)James F. Dunnigan, Albert A. Nofi
Many countries have started wars/conflicts by believing that they had a surefire plan and by totally misreading the response.
I do not see how anyone believes that Iran could very easily misinterpret what a Democratic Party controlled United States would do considering the poltical rheotic coming out of the Democrats.
Rudi I was referring to the fact they were refining uranium instead of trying to get at the plutonium through a breeder reactor or reprocessing. Of course it could be because they don’t have enough uranium in the first place, but my impression is that it’s a lot more difficult to refine uranium to weapons grade than to get weapons grade plutonium. Is this not correct?
In any case, once any amount of science or rudi-mentary damage analysis is talked about, it ruins the doomsday scenarios.
hopefully this stopped that link thing or something
I see it does. Good.
Laura,
Actually that is very much my opinion of McCain (well, a combination of contrarian and opportunist, choosing when to be contrarian when he judges that the maverick position will be favorably recieved.) I don’t know if I’ve ever stated that here but I have voiced this opinion many times.
I concede that it may be a bias of mine because I’m ideological and I think that decisions should be made with the backdrop of a particular worldview and philosophy, but I do try to objectively determine whether or not a pragmatic politician is making decisions based on conviction or not. In other words, I do believe that it’s possible for a politician to formulate policy positions on a case by case basis rather than by ideology; but it usually seems to me that rather than doing so, most of the time they are choosing their position not by what they think is best but by what they think is most popular at that moment.
sorry about screwing up the link. I guess that without a preview method, I should just stick to text.
Rudi-mentry LOL
SD fogot his close tag and everthig is now underlined.
U235 is complicated to refine, science is out their for anybody, but the logistics and engineering make it difficult for 3rd world countries. Iran still doesn’t have a large scale breeder reactor, no reactor no PU. From what I understand PU extraction is a more simple chemical engineering process, but creating a implosion bomb is more difficult than a gun bomb. The US and USSR had tactical gun type artillery (mini gun bombs) during the height of the Cold War. I recommend ArmsControlWonks for the nerds, better informed and no political bloviating or Rapture Ready crowd.
MvdG – Ballon Juice has an automatic preview window. The old comments had a manual preview, maybe the site administrator can check on preview options.
Thanks SD that looks interesting. BTW how do you interpret Democrat rhetoric? Besides the fact that there is not much “Democrat” rhetoric because there are more proposals than senators, I interpret most of them as saying we should pull out of Iraq and send more troops to Afghanistan to increase that war as well as to Kuwait and other regional bases to be on standby in case they are needed. From my perspective these plans are inherently hawkish vis a vis Iran because we won’t be engaged in Iraq.
Rudi our Bolshevik comrade observed: “While a Left/Right debate is good for the phoggosphere, it is mostly rhetoric. When the debate is a scientific/technical debate nobody listens or cares…”
Rudi, do you mean no one has any interest in the reality of Iran’s capabilities?
If so, I cautiously agree. As you suggest in your remark about rhetoric, there seems to be a knee-jerk reaction on both sides (one that we are facing Holocaust,the other that it is all an illusion).
Iran does seem to be having difficulty. However, they could easily send some chaps to Pakistan with some briefcases of cash (as they have done), and these problems would be resolved. Equally, there were reports last week of Iranian experts in North Korea observing their tests.
They may be years off…but that is no reason to dismiss the possibility.
BTW: I noticed in this thread the assumption that the US would retaliate for an Iranian nuclear strike on Tel Aviv. I was surprised at this. Do people here agree the US would do this? After all, Israel is a client, but not a formal treaty ally. Should the US do this, when Israel has its own capability?
I know the BBC would probably advise calm in case of a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv, and the EU would certainly advise against Israeli retaliation that may “escalate” the crisis . . . but why should President Hillary/Obama/Sharpton get involved?
Yeah Marlowecan good point. Personally I think Israel can take care of itself and trust them to make much better decisions than we do. If for some reason Israel had no retalitary capability I think we would (and probably should) get involved but as to us actually pushing the button? I dunno.
If they did retaliate then we should fully back them against the outcry though.
Komrad Marlow,
When the ignorant masses start talking molybdenum hexafluoride (MoF6) and UCF instead of Armegeddon or the next Holocaust, the glorious Socialist Revolution will collapse. As long as the US clogs their arteries on trans-fats at McD and fantasies about $1000 brownies our devious plan for world domination can continue. Hail the Internationale!!!!
A Turbo Popeye flying at 50 feet will give a glorious fireball to watch in Qom, the Persian heathens city. If no one sees the splash from the German subs……
…briefly…
Power Station grade Uranium is 3% pure.
Weapons grade Uranium is 97% pure.
Iran is going to have a hard time making Weapons grade Uranium in my estimation…but then again all this talk ’bout Israel, they’re indirectly supplying their enemies with weapons tech via China…how many times do I have to say this? *smh*
btw…hi, laura!
It is not a reach to believe that militant radicals in the Muslim world will interpret the U.S.’s leaving Iraq as a total sign of weakness.
Is this going to be our justification for every military decision from now on? Not whether we have a good chance of achieving set objectives, not whether the losses we face are worth what we have a chance of gaining, not whether the idea has any public support, not whether we can afford the money for the effort, not whether it will weaken our military in the long run militarily, but whether the Muslim world will see it as a sign of weakness?????
Its a fallacy that this is the only criteria we should use, and can easily lead us to self-destructive engagements. I think constantly second guessing every action by whether or not it will embolden the enemy actually weakens us as a nation. It also means we can never leave Iraq, or at least not for the forseeable future. Even when Bush and Condi put pressure on Maliki, letting him know he was on borrowed time with the American people, he used that argument.
“When the Marines were killed in Beirut, the Americans ran. ”
People who cite this should be obligated to finish the thought. So. what should have the US have done? Bomb Beirut? Destroy Lebanon? What?
Israel didn’t run from Hezbollah last year. The result is a stronger Hezbollah.
This is about revenge. I don;t think we should ever go to war based on emotions without a cold dash of reasonable assessment thrown in.
Once again EVERYONE avoids my reply in dealing with this…WHY!?!?!?!
C.P.: Iran is buying weapons from latin american countries (as well).
Uranium: yes, we all know that, that’s why American intelligence thinks they’ll need 4 years, although the latest info, as reported, might mean that they’ll be there in 2 – 4 years.
As I understand it, it is a bigger step to go from nothing to a bit enriched, then from a bit to much enriched.
Am I correct?
ONCE AGAIN C.Prez is ignoring my reply to his reply!
WHY?
Rudi you are the absolute worst person I have ever read in interpreting the facts. Tehran has 162 centrifuges. They have embarked on a Manhattan style project to make WMDS. 52000 centrifuges is not a far off project given that the resouces of an entire country are being thrown at this project along with the backing of half of the USA’s allies under the table.
So because it might take them 3 years to accomplish nuclear weapons we should take a breath? We should not worry? We should listen to google? We should glean our information from Wikipedia???????
Sorry but I dont like your math and I dont like your conclusions and as the proverbial saying goes…….That just ain’t right.
Oh but forgive me. I’m sorry I’m being a NEO FEAR MONGER now because I am worried about a country embarking on a Manhattan style project with the stated goal of Turning the Middle east and Israel specifically into radioactive dust.
Sorry what was I thinking. We all know he is only kidding. At least Wikipedia and google does.
UIS,
Do I think the Iranians are building a bomb, probably.
But, (UIS) How can you get in a lather when their program isn’t robust or competent in the enginering of the complete process.
The US created the ENGINEERING and two types of fission bombs in 3 or 4 years. The Iranians have been working on this for 50/25 years and can’t even keep greasy fingerprints off their Powell tubes. The US had Openhiemer, the Iranians have the Three Stooges and dance around grams of LEU. They probably don’t have a clean UCF so the P1 CF plug and explode. Can they workout these problems, of course, but lies from DoS and JPost don’t stand up to the facts.